Trump joins GOP calls for Biden to freeze $6B transfer in Iranian funds
Former President Trump on Wednesday joined the GOP calls for President Biden to refreeze the $6 billion in Iranian funds released by the U.S. last month during a prisoner swap.
“CROOKED JOE BIDEN MUST TAKE BACK AND FREEZE THE 6 BILLION DOLLARS RIGHT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a Truth Social post. “HOW COULD ANYONE BE SO INCOMPETENT AND STUPID? BIDEN CAUSED THIS WAR, AND IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE!!!”
Last month, the Biden administration agreed to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for the freedom of five wrongfully detained American citizens.
In doing so, the Biden administration granted clemency to five Iranians and issued a blanket waiver for international banks to allow the transfer of the Iranian oil sale proceeds, which were frozen in South Korea, to a bank in Qatar.
U.S. officials said the funds were to be used only for food, medicine and other humanitarian goods.
The deal promoted criticism from some Republican lawmakers, who argued that the move would free up resources for Iran’s military spending and support of terrorism.
The $6 billion transfer came under renewed scrutiny over the weekend after Hamas, a Palestinian militant group that has been supported by Iran, launched a multipronged attack against Israel. Hamas fighters invaded multiple Israeli towns by land, sea and air, leaving more than 1,000 dead, mostly civilians.
A group of Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), wrote a letter to Biden dated Oct. 9, asking him to stop the release of funds into Iran.
The senators argued the money is “fungible” and at risk of being used by Hamas or Iran to further attacks against Israel — or could be used by the Iranian regime to fund terrorism.
Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed back against suggestions that the Biden administration’s deal may have contributed to Hamas’s recent attacks, claiming the $6 billion in frozen funds have remained unspent.
Pressed over whether Iran used other funds to support the attacks in anticipation of the funds being unfrozen, Blinken emphasized the humanitarian clause in the deal, while noting, “Iran has, unfortunately, always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas.”
Iran has dismissed allegations that it played a role in Hamas’s attack and denied claims it supplied the group with military aid or intelligence.
Israeli forces were quick to launch a major counteroffensive against Hamas over the weekend and have continued to launch retaliatory strikes into the Gaza Strip.
The death toll in the Israel-Hamas conflict rose to 2,200 lives Wednesday, with that number expected to climb as fighting rages on.
Go to Source: Administration News | The Hill
Steve Scalise confident in speaker bid as Republicans deliberate: ‘We have the votes to do it’
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., made his pitch to fellow Republicans to become the next House speaker on Wednesday.
Scalise appeared on Fox News to discuss ongoing Republican deliberations on who will replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Scalise is facing a challenger in Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who has been endorsed by former President Trump.
“One of the things I’ve been talking about as Speaker Steve Scalise is I will be challenging Joe Biden on day one to focus on securing the border,” Scalise said when asked about the U.S.-Mexico border.
Scalise went on to say that McCarthy has chosen not to enter the speaker race for a second time, and he argued that he has the votes necessary to secure the position.
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“Our momentum has been growing. I feel like we have the votes to do it – and not only do it today, but to go up on the House floor and get 218 votes, and then get back to work for the American people that elected us,” he said.
Scalise later said that he is confident the House will have a speaker by the end of the day, regardless of who it is.
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Not all Republicans are so confident, however. GOP lawmakers are expected to hold their interparty election at 10 a.m. after getting briefed on the unfolding crisis in Israel – which adds a sense of urgency as lawmakers scramble to restore order in Congress.
“I don’t know if by the end of this week we will have a speaker. If you were to ask me a couple days ago, pre-Israel being horrifically attacked by Hamas, I would have told you that it would have been a month before we had a speaker,” Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., told reporters after a closed-door GOP meeting Tuesday night.
Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., was also doubtful a candidate will be chosen by the end of the day.
“I think there’s some [lawmakers] that have some problems with past behavior and each other, and so I think it’s going to take more than one day to get this done,” Murphy told Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Liz Elkind contributed to this report.
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At the White House, Commander is coming back to bite
A week after President Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, was removed from the White House following a series of biting incidents involving staff members and the Secret Service, one member of Congress is demanding details about what kind of workplace safety measures are in place to protect workers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent a letter to Biden and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su on Wednesday morning to request recent annual reports and “any employee workplace safety complaints filed with [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] or any office or agency within the White House since January 20, 2021.”
“The White House has the responsibility to set an example for ensuring workplace safety and health for its employees. Unfortunately, it has recently come to our attention that it is failing to uphold this responsibility,” Foxx wrote, citing “recent reports concerning White House staff and U.S. Secret Service personnel regularly incurring dog bites,” which, she said, “indicate that occupational hazards are prevalent at the White House.”
Over the summer, 196 pages of internal communications made public after a Freedom of Information Act request from the conservative legal organization Judicial Watch unveiled that Commander, Biden’s 2-year-old German shepherd, was involved in several biting incidents — including one that sent a Secret Service agent to the hospital.
In September, the Secret Service confirmed that Commander bit another Secret Service agent, bringing the total number of reported incidents to 11. On Thursday, CNN reported that that number is higher, and includes members of White House staff beyond the Secret Service — after which Commander was promptly removed from the White House campus.
Commander was the second Biden dog to be sent away from the White House. Major, also a German shepherd, was sent to live with friends of the family after his own biting incidents.
Foxx wrote the letter to remind the White House that it is “not immune to the laws of the land,” she told POLITICO in an interview.
“If 10 people had accidents in a private plant, or if there had been dog bites in a private plant, I’ll guarantee you OSHA would have been down on the heads of the owners and operators of that plant,” she added.
OSHA’s standards for federal employees differ slightly from that for public sector employees. But federal law does require agencies to “establish and maintain an effective and comprehensive occupational safety and health program,” and to report occupational accidents and injuries annually to the secretary of Labor.
Though the legal recourse available to staffers on the receiving end of a Commander bite is murky, the most likely path for redress would be through a workers’ compensation claim, John Mahoney, a D.C.-based federal employment lawyer, told POLITICO.
“The Secret Service employees are federal employees, so they could file workers’ compensation claims through the agency which would go up to the Department of Labor, in case ultimately they have injuries or they need medical attention or they lose time at work because of the bites,” Mahoney said. “They cannot sue. … You’re dealing with the Executive Office of the White House, the president, so they’re exempt from a lot of statutes that would apply in the private sector.”
Go to Source: Politico
Republicans Are Deadlocked Heading Into Speaker Contest
White House silent on US future with Iran following claims it helped plan attacks on Israel
The White House has remained silent on any future relationship with Iran in light of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist leaders claiming Iran helped plan the surprise attacks against Israel.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House at least three times this week inquiring if the U.S. would participate in negations and return to the nuclear deal if evidence is found that Iran helped plan the brutal attacks against Israel. The White House’s press office ultimately referred Fox News Digital to the National Security Council Monday, which did not respond to the inquiry.
News broke Sunday that Iranian security officials allegedly approved Hamas’ plan to attack Israel during a meeting in Beirut last Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Hamas and Hezbollah leaders said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps worked with Hamas since August on air, land and sea attack plans.
Following the report, U.S. leaders said they have not found direct evidence of Iran planning the attacks in coordination with Hamas but noted that Iran has long supported Hamas, and the nation holds “a degree of complicity” in the attacks.
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“We are looking through the information streams. We haven’t seen hard, tangible evidence that Iran was directly involved in participating in or resourcing and planning these sets of complex attacks that Hamas pulled off over the weekend,” Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby said Tuesday, something echoed later on in the day by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who again stressed that the U.S. has no evidence that Iran knew about the attacks in advance or that it helped Hamas.
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Both Sullivan and Kirby’s comments this week echo what a U.S. official told Fox News Digital on Sunday evening, that “of course” Iran is in the picture, but that U.S. officials currently do not have information corroborating the report.
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When asked specifically about the future of the U.S. relationship with Iran, however, the White House has not said if leaders would return to the negotiating table for the Iran nuclear deal or if the U.S. strategy with Iran will change in light of terrorist leaders claiming Iran helped with the attacks.
World powers, including the U.S. and the United Kingdom, reached a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, formerly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, after years of international tensions that Iran was working to build a nuclear bomb. The agreement limited some of Iran’s nuclear activities, while allowing international authorities to carry out inspections. Sanctions on Tehran were lifted in exchange.
Former President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018 after slamming it as “defective at its core.”
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“At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction, that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful, nuclear energy program,” Trump said at the time. “Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie.”
Under the Biden administration, officials have signaled they hope to return to the deal if Iran comes back into compliance.
“The JCPOA has not been on our agenda since September, when Iran turned its back on a deal that was on the table, but we are still very much open to diplomacy,” a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital back in April.
The Biden administration has also come under scrutiny this week for a $6 billion prisoner swap deal with Iran last month. Republicans have claimed that the money helped free up resources to fund the attacks, though Biden administration leaders have pushed back on the claims.
“I think it’s important for people to remember that not a single dollar … of those funds has gone into Iran,” Kirby told Fox News’ Bret Baier on “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday. “Not one… not any. Nothing’s been allocated out of that fund, and we’re going to watch it.”
Chaos broke out in Israel early Saturday morning when Hamas launched attacks that took the nation by surprise. The terrorist organization has since fired more than 4,500 rockets at residential areas from the Gaza Strip, which has contributed to killing an estimated 1,000 Israelis and injuring thousands of others.
The U.S. confirmed that 14 Americans are among those killed in Israel, and an undisclosed number of other Americans are unaccounted for and being held hostage under Hamas terrorists.
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Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has meanwhile praised the attacks on social media, saying at the beginning of the war, the “Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands of the Palestinian people and the Resistance forces throughout the region,” WSJ reported.
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Biden to express support for Israel during visit with Jewish leaders
President Biden on Wednesday will drop by a roundtable discussion at the White House involving Jewish leaders amid the fallout of terrorist attacks against Israel over the weekend.
Biden will deliver remarks before the roundtable, which will also be attended by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, domestic policy adviser Steve Benjamin and senior adviser on public engagement Steve Benjamin.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish and has led the administration’s public efforts to fight antisemitism, will also attend and deliver remarks.
“This roundtable discussion will focus on the Biden-Harris Administration’s support for Israel following the Hamas terrorist attacks and the implementation of the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” the White House said.
The event with Jewish leaders comes as the White House has made clear its steadfast support for Israel after attacks by the militant group Hamas killed more than 1,000 Israelis.
Biden in remarks on Tuesday condemned the attacks as “abhorrent” and vowed the U.S. would have Israel’s back.
“This is terrorism. But sadly, for the Jewish people, it’s not new,” Biden said Tuesday. “This attack has brought to the surface painful memories of the scars left by a millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”
The White House in May, led by Emhoff, rolled out a first of its kind national strategy for combating antisemitism as the country grapples with record levels of violence, vandalism and hate speech directed at Jewish communities.
Go to Source: Administration News | The Hill
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Go to Source: Morning Joe